Recap of June North Community meeting (6/28/2016)

A special thank you to those of you who came out for our June meeting, held at the Baxter campus in Round Lake. We've had a steady turn out for most of our meetings, and again at the June meeting, we had many familiar faces, as well as one or two new community members.

At our June meeting, hosted by Baxter, we took the approach of building a comprehensive tool that can be shared with our membership base, published on our website, and additionally presented at the 2017 national ISPI conference in the spring. Our topic, 'What makes a good project sponsor?' was sourced from a collection of information provided by the Baxter team, along with the challenge to turn it into a working tool that HPI consultants can use with clients, both internally and externally.

Exercise #1

Our evening began with a small group discussion around past experiences we've all had with sponsors who were ineffective, and the resulting impacts on the project. The share out of information was impressive, with all of us citing numerous experiences with less than desirable project sponsors. It was clear that having criteria for excellence in sponsorship was a deep need that we've all felt personally. From here, we shifted the conversation to our collective experiences in working with very effective sponsors, leading us to begin identifying key sponsor qualifications that contribute to project success.

Exercise #2

Facilitated by our host, Art Paton, we conducted a group exercise using 5-6 flip charts with titles such as 'Sponsorship Derailleurs', 'Critical Sponsor Characteristics', 'Risks', etc. Taking turns at the flip charts and discussing details where we saw fit, the group created comprehensive lists corresponding to each flip chart topic. At completion of the brainstorming exercise, we pulled back together as a group and discussed the results, adding clarification and color where needed, and pulling items that didn't seem to fit.

Summary

Feedback from the group was that we all really enjoyed the topic and the process by which information was collected and discussed. Unanimously, we were all thrilled with the idea of having created a tool that fills a real gap in our industry, and the ability to share it with our membership base. Art and his team are in the process of summarizing the results, and crafting a template for public consumption. Stay tuned for more information!

A Look Ahead

Our next North Community meeting will be held on August 9 from 7:00 until 8:30 pm at the Baxter Deerfield campus, 1 Baxter Parkway, Deerfield, IL. Visit the North Community page on the Chicago ISPI website for additional details and important RSVP information.